Privacy Notice

What this Privacy Notice Covers

This Privacy Notice (or, “Notice”) describes how Khoros collects, uses, shares, and secures your Personal Data when you access this website (https://khoros.com) and/or Khoros’s Community (https://community.khoros.com/) (together, this “Site”), use our Services (defined below), or otherwise interact with us. It also explains your rights regarding our use of your Personal Data and your options concerning how we communicate with you. If you do not agree with this Privacy Notice, do not access our Site, use our Services, or interact with any other part of our business.

When we say “Personal Data” (or “information” interchangeably throughout this Notice), we mean any data that could directly or indirectly be used to identify you or your household. Personal Data can be anything ranging from your name and email address, to the IP address of your device, and the location from which you access this website.

When we refer to “Khoros,” “we,” and “us,” we mean Khoros, LLC and its wholly owned subsidiaries.

When we refer to our “Services,” we mean our digital customer engagement platform, our products, and the other services we provide to our Customers. Khoros provides a variety of products via our digital customer engagement platform, which helps our customers (“Customers”) create the best user experience for their end users and customers (“End Users”). These products include:

1. Marketing;

2. Care; and

3. Community.

Please note when we are providing Sevices to our Customers, this Privacy Notice does not apply to the extent that we are acting as a Customer’s data processor or service provider. If you want to know more about how we process Personal Data on behalf of a Customer, you should consult that Customer’s privacy notice and/or contact that customer directly.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the information contained in this Notice, you can contact us by sending your queries to the addresses listed in the “How to Contact Us” section below.

We collect a minimal amount of information to make our Site, Services, and business function. We collect information about you when you provide it to us, when you visit our Site, when you use our Services, and when other sources provide it to us. You can read more about the information we collect about you and why in the sections below.

Personal Data You Provide Directly to Us. We collect Personal Data from you when you provide it to us directly – for example, when you post it in our Community or apply for a job at Khoros. This information can include your name, email address, phone number, company title, and social media account information. We collect this information from you when you provide it to us in the following contexts:

Personal Data Collected From Our Services. We collect Personal Data from our Customers (via their authorized users) and their End Users when we provide our Services. We share this information with our service providers to deliver our Services to our Customers and as needed for our own legitimate business and operational purposes (for example, to do the things we need to do to function as a business). Among other things, service providers help us to administer our Site, conduct surveys, provide technical support, process payments, and assist in the fulfillment of orders.

When we collect Personal Data on behalf of our Customers, we do so as our Customers’ processor or service provider in accordance with their specific instructions. As such, if you are a Customer’s End User with questions about how your Personal Data is being handled, please reach out directly to that Customer. Our Customers maintain their own policies concerning the collection, use, and storage of the Personal Data of their End Users.

You can read more information about what information we collect from our Services and why in the table below. And, a comprehensive list of the Personal Data that we collect from our Customers and their End Users can also be found here.

Please note that any direct or indirect use of any social media network or other third-party site through our Services is subject to your consent of the legal terms and conditions of that site. Your continued use of our Services and of those social media networks constitutes your acceptance of both this Privacy Notice and the legal terms and conditions of those social media networks. To read these third party terms and conditions, please refer to the “Other Important Privacy Information” section of this Privacy Notice.

Personal Data We Collect Automatically From You. When you visit our Site, use our Services, request more information about us, or sign up for one of our events, we collect information automatically using tracking technologies and web forms. Specifically, we use cookies to passively collect information such as browser type and IP address. This means that a third party uses technology (e.g., a cookie) to collect information about your use of our Site so that they can report analytics to us or provide advertising about products and services tailored to your interests. That third party might also collect information over time and across different websites in order to serve advertisements on our website or other websites. We collect this information to provide you with what you request, to learn more about who is interested in our Services, to track usage, to provide a personalized experience, and to improve navigation experience on our pages. Our legal basis and legitimate interest for this processing is to ensure that our Site and Services run smoothly and without interruption.

Personal Data From Third Parties. We collect information from partners and other websites pertaining to visitors of our Site and our Customers‘ websites. For example, we will ask or engage these third parties to tell us additional information about their visitors, such as how they respond to our communications or promotions. We do so because we have a legitimate interest in learning more about how our users respond to communications and promotions.

Similarly, we partner with a third-party ad network to display advertisements on our Site and to manage our advertisements on other sites. Our ad network partner uses cookies and web beacons to collect information about your activities on this and other websites to provide you targeted ads based upon your interests (excluding sensitive topics, such as political or religious views). If you do not want this information to be used for the purpose of serving you targeted ads, you may opt-out by clicking here. Please note that opting out will remove targeted ads only. You will still receive generic ads. Our legal basis for obtaining this information is to capture Site analytics.

We collect information from several different sources, and where we collect the information from dictates how we use it. Below are high-level descriptions of some of the purposes for which we use the information we collect about you.

Provide, Maintain and Improve the Site and Our Services. We collect information about you to ensure optimal functionality of our Site and Services. For example, for our social media management Services (e.g. our Marketing product), information taken from social media helps us to provide context to a brand, such as information about an individual’s interactions with that brand. We can also use information collected from social media to measures a brand’s influence on those platforms. Brands can then use this information to provide better support and service to their customers, since this information helps them better understand what their customers want.

Additionally, we use information gathered from other sources to respond to requests for additional information about our Services, to develop and enhance our Services, and to fulfill our legal obligations as needed. We may use a user's email address to send promotional or marketing materials on related Services, such as updates on the product line. This is only the case when a user is a Customer, a Service is requested by the user, or we have some other pre-existing business relationship with the user. We use your IP address and browser-type information in the general administration of our Site.

Please be advised that for our Care product, Khoros’s use and transfer of information received from Google’s APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Please refer to that policy for additional information.

Marketing and Personalized Advertising. We process your Personal Data to send you marketing information, product recommendations, and other non-transactional communications (e.g., marketing newsletters, telemarketing calls, SMS, or push notifications) about us, our affiliates, and partners. These can include information about our products, promotions, or events as necessary.

We also process your Personal Data to conduct marketing research, advertise to you, and provide personalized information about us, both on and off our Site. Further, we use your Personal Data to provide personalized content based upon your activities and interests to the extent necessary for us to achieve our advertising goals.

You can read more about your rights when it comes to marketing and advertising in the “Your Rights and Options Regarding Your Data” section below.

Measure Performance. We are always looking for ways to make our Services smarter, faster, more secure, and useful. To do this, we use information and collective learnings for analytics and measurements to understand how our Services are being used. When this data is aggregated and analyzed, it allows us to troubleshoot, improve, and track trends across our platform.

Communicate with You. We use your contact information to send communications via email and within the Services, such as updates and changes. We also provide tailored communications based on your activity and interactions with us.

For Safety and Security. We use information about you and your Service use to verify accounts and activity, to detect, prevent, and respond to potential or actual security incidents and to monitor and protect against other malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity.

For Employment Evaluations. Information collected during the recruitment process is used to help us evaluate your candidacy for employment. This information is disclosed to our private equity sponsor. You can read more about this in the “How We Share Your Personal Data” section below.

For Legal Compliance. If we have a legal obligation to process your information, we will do so in cooperation with public and government authorities, courts, or regulators. This is done to protect our rights or as necessary to protect against misuse or abuse of our websites. We will also cooperate with legal authorities to: 1) protect personal property, 2) ensure our safety, 3) pursue all remedies available to us and limit our damages, 4) comply with judicial proceedings, court orders, or legal processes, or 5) respond to lawful requests.

For Other Purposes. Please note that we may use your information in these additional scenarios: in accordance with your consent, to complete a merger or sale of assets, to allow social sharing functionality on our Site and through our Services, to manage our contests or promotions, to register visitors to our office, and to protect you, our Customers, and the public.

There are some circumstances where we need to share your information. However, we will never sell your information or the information of End Users. And, we will never share your information or the information of End Users outside of the ways described below.

Khoros operates on a global scale. As a result, we may have to transfer your information to our affiliates, contractors, service providers, and other third parties in various countries and jurisdictions around the world. When this happens, we utilize the appropriate safeguards to make sure your information remains protected. The way we safeguard your information is highlighted below.

Transfers from the EEA, UK, and Switzerland. To facilitate our global operations, we may transfer information worldwide. If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), United Kingdom (“UK”), or Switzerland, some of the countries that we transfer, store, and process information in may not have privacy and data protection laws that are equivalent to the laws of the country where you are located. When this is the case, we utilize the European Commission Standard Contractual Data Protection Clauses and the United Kingdom Standard Contractual Data Protection Clauses to safeguard the transfer of information we collect from the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland.

Transfers to Other Countries. When we transfer your information to third parties located in countries outside the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, we comply with the applicable cross-border transfer rules of those countries. For our Customers, we do this by entering into a written agreement with each Customer that meets the data protection requirements of these countries.

Additionally, when we collect information about you as part of our Services, it may be transferred, stored, and/or processed in the United States. In these instances, we ensure that the appropriate organizational, contractual, and technical safeguards are in place so that your information is always protected.

We will retain your Personal Data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide our Services to you. We may also retain the Personal Data in an encrypted format for disaster recovery purposes for up to 90 days following the termination or expiration of an agreement, pending routine erasure cycles. Log files held for security reasons may also be retained for up to 12 months. In general, other types of information, like information obtained from your use of this Site or from employment applications, will be retained for the period prescribed by applicable law.

For further information on our Personal Data retention practices and policies as it relates to our Services, please see our Data Retention and Media Destruction Policy for Customer Data. If you have any additional questions on this topic, you may contact us using the information contained in the “Contact Us” section below. You may also request us to stop the use of your Personal Data to provide Services at any time.

We take information security and privacy of Personal Data very seriously. We fully support and abide by the data privacy principals established in the EU Directive on Data Protection as well as all other applicable local privacy laws and regulations. Our security controls and mechanisms are based on the ISO 27001 global security management standard, and we conduct external security audits and independent security testing on an annual basis. You can read more about our security measures here.

Please note that no service is completely secure. While we strive to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss or a data breach will never occur. If we are required by law to inform you of a breach to your information, we may notify you electronically, in writing, or by telephone.

You are afforded certain rights when it comes to your information. Below is a summary of those rights, how to exercise them, and any limitations.

Your Rights. You have the right to know: what Personal Data of yours we process; to request a copy of your information in a structured, electronic format; to object to our use of your information; or to request deletion or restriction of your information. Additionally, you may request that: we update, correct, or supplement any information that we hold about you; we limit how we process your Personal Data; or we provide information about the consequences of denying consent to processing. You can submit any such requests via this form.

You may opt-out of online tracking based targeted advertising (e.g., cookies) by clicking the preference link listed at the bottom of each page on this Site. Please note that if you change browsers or computers, or if you clear your browser’s cache, you may need to click the link again to apply your preference. You may also opt-out of other forms of targeted advertising by submitting a request as described below.

If you choose, you may opt-out of having your information used for certain purposes, such as receiving promotional or marketing materials from us. If you no longer wish to receive these updates, you can opt-out by following the instructions listed in the mailer or by emailing us at marketing@khoros.com (please include the term OPT-OUT in the subject line followed by your email address if you choose the latter).

Where we collect or process your personal information based upon consent, you may revoke consent. Please note, if you revoke your consent for the processing of personal information then we may no longer be able to provide you services.

There are certain circumstances where your requests may be limited. For example, if honoring your request would reveal information about another individual, or if you request us to delete information which we are permitted by law or our legitimate interests to keep, we reserve the right to deny your request.

Please note that, as required by law, we will require you to prove your identity whenever you make a request. Depending on the type of request, we will ask for information such as your name, email, or social media profiles. We may also request that you sign a declaration confirming your identity. Once we confirm your identity, we will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct, or delete your information from our files.

In some circumstances, you may designate an authorized agent to submit requests to exercise certain privacy rights on your behalf. We will require verification that you provided the authorized agent permission to make a request on your behalf and of your own identity. If you are a business submitting the request, we will require proof that you are registered with the Secretary of State to conduct business in California. If we do not receive both pieces of information, the request will be denied.

We use common information-gather tools such as cookies and other similar tracking technologies to automatically collect information about you as you navigate our website or interact with any emails we send to you.

Cookies. A cookie is a text file with small pieces of data that helps a website remember information about your visit. We use cookies to remember user settings, such as language preference, and for authentication. You can control the use of cookies through your browser settings. Please note, if you reject cookies, you may continue to use our Site, but your ability to use some features may be limited. You can read more about our cookies here.

Other Tracking Technologies. As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, referring/exit pages, browser type and operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. We do not link this automatically collected data to other information we collect about you.

We may change this Notice from time to time. With that in mind, we ask that you continue to review it for any new updates. If we make any material changes to this Notice, we will either contact you via email to the email address specified in your account or place a conspicuous notice on our Site prior to implementation. This Notice also includes an “effective” and “last updated” date, so you can see when this version took effect and when this version was last modified, respectively. We have also included a table of “Key Changes” at the end of this Notice for your reference.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, the practices of this Site, your dealings with this Site, or if you need to access this Privacy Notice in an alternative format due to having a disability, you can call us at 1 (800) 235-0187, email us at privacy@khoros.com, or write us at the following address:

Khoros, LLC
7300 Ranch Road 2222, Building 3, Suite 150
Austin, TX 78730
USA

If you’d like to exercise any of your rights, as described in this Privacy Notice, or if you either have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily or you disagree with our denial of a request and would like to appeal, please contact our Data Protection Officer:

Jacqueline Coyne
Telephone: (512) 201-4090
Email: privacy@khoros.com

You may also contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request.

If you are located in the EEA and feel that we have not able to address your complaint or concern satisfactorily, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority that oversees Personal Data rules in your jurisdiction. For example, in the United Kingdom, your complaint should be directed to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Right to Non-Discrimination. We will not discriminate against individuals who exercise their privacy rights under applicable law.

Collection of Personal Data from Children. Our Site is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect Personal Data from children under the age of 16.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with Personal Data without your consent, please contact us by using the information in the “How to Contact Us” section so we can take steps to delete such Personal Data from our systems.

Do Not Track. We do not currently recognize automated browser signals, which may include “Do Not Track” instructions.

Blogs. Our Site offers publicly accessible blogs and Community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your Personal Data from our blog or community forum, contact us at privacy@khoros.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your Personal Data. If this happens, we will let you know.

Social Media Terms. By accessing our Site and using our Services, you agree to abide by the terms and conditions of Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp.

Please note that, in addition to the normal procedure for deleting stored data under YouTube's Terms of Service, users can revoke access to their data via the Google security settings page, located here.

Social Media Widgets. Our Site includes social media features, such as buttons and widgets. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy notice of the company providing it.

Accessibility. This Policy can be accessed using your browser’s audio reader capabilities.

Testimonials, Comment, Idea, and Survey Submissions. We display personal testimonials from satisfied Customers and other endorsements on our Site. With your consent, we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, please contact us at privacy@khoros.com.

We consider answers to surveys, comments, ideas, and suggestions to be non-personal and do not classify them as Personal Data. Except as otherwise provided by applicable contracts with our Customers or a third party, we are free to disclose and use such data or information without any obligation.

Residents of California have additional rights available to them under the California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”) and the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”). California law requires organizations to disclose whether certain categories of information are collected, sold, or transferred for an organization’s business purpose. You can find a list of the categories of information that we collect and share here. Please note that this list is comprehensive and may refer to types of information that we share about people other than yourself.

Sensitive Information Disclosure. In general, we do not collect the sensitive personal information, as defined under California law. Additionally, we do not “sell” sensitive personal information for purposes of cross-context behavioral advertising.

Exercising Your Rights Under the CCPA and CPRA. The CCPA and CPRA also require us to share information on how to exercise your rights, such as the right to deletion and the right to request access to the categories of information we have collected about you. For more information on which rights are available to you, how to exercise your rights, and how long your data is retained for, please refer to the sections called “Your Rights and Options Regarding Your Personal Data” and “How Long We Keep Your Personal Data in this Notice.

Sharing Your Personal Data. We do not sell your Personal Data. We do, however, share your Personal Data with others as described in the “How We Share Your Personal Data” section of this Notice. This Notice further highlights the legitimate business purposes for which we collect or share your information and the categories of third parties with whom we share it.

California Shine the Light. If you would like more information concerning the categories of personal information (if any) we share with third parties or affiliates for those parties to use for direct marketing, please submit a written request to us using the information in the Contact Information section above.We do not discriminate against California residents who exercise any of their rights described in this Notice.

Notice of Collection. The table below describes the categories of information we “collect,” “share,” and “disclose” for a business purpose (as those terms are defined by California law). Please note, in addition to the recipients identified below, we may disclose any of the categories of information we collect with government entities, as may be needed to comply with law or prevent illegal activity. We do not “sell” (as that term is definedby California law) your personal information for money. As discussed elsewhere in this Notice, we use cookies and similar tracking technologies for purposes of targeted advertising. For more information on cookie use, please see “How We Use Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies.” For details regarding how we use personal information, please refer to the section called, “What Personal Data We Collect.” For information regarding how long we retain personal information, please refer to “How Long We Keep Your Personal Data” and “How We Secure Your Personal Data.”

We do not collect information from or about government-issued identification, characteristics of protected classifications (such as age and sex), biometric information, and non-public education information (as that term is defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).

We collect and process sensitive information as defined in PIPA § 2, art. 3 and pursuant to § 1, art. 17 (2). We collect and process the information for the purposes described above in “What Personal Data We Collect” and “How We Use Your Personal Data.”

We generally do not collect or process sensitive information as defined by PIPL Ch. 2 § 2, art. 28.

This Notice was updated on July 20, 2023 to include information about data collected through mobile applications and information for residents of California, China, and Korea.

Click here to download a PDF version of this Notice.

Effective Date: July 20, 2023